By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page opposes civic order to the twisting, earthly life it tries to banish, then turns toward a private plea for spiritual or artistic rescue.
The imagery is compressed but pointed. Cities reject snakes and lizards, then remake leaves into symbols of their own rightness, so the poem treats culture as a system that edits the natural world into acceptable forms. The closing appeal for an 'improvisation of theopathy' feels like a way out of that godless correction.
A short late-book epigram: 'The cities banished everything that twists from moving to the surface of the earth, snakes, lizards,' then 'created theaves in that image to symbolize its correctness in doing so' - culture editing the natural world into self-justifying symbols. The counter-move is a private plea: 'Least let my suggestion of film in this madland make for me an improvasation of theopathy raising me out of this godless situation' - improvised god-feeling set against the cleaned city. Source forms 'theaves,' 'improvasation,' and 'theopathy' are preserved.